Gun cartridges containing paint and other fluid-containing ball projectiles have been widely used for target practice and for games, as described, for example, in magazines entitled "Action Pursuit Games", "Pursuit Games", "Paint Ball Pursuit", "Paintball Sports". Such devices are particularly useful for training applications by police, the military, SWAT teams and other law enforcement agencies for such purposes as riot and crowd control, rapid marking of objects, animals, trees, people and the like, and for precise delivery of the desired substance contained within the ball.
Special training guns are often required to accomodate the cartridge constructions, as distinguished from use in the actual weapons customarily employed by police, military or others for which these special marking cartridges are not adapted.
Prior ball cartridges, moreover, introduce the danger of injury to the party at which such are fired, by virtue of the propulsion out of the cartridge of the generally plastic or other ball-holding insert that often hits and hurts such parties.
Underlying the present invention is the modification of the ball - carrying cartridge construction to enable its use in such actual weapons, such as, for example, conventional shot gun type weapons, instead of special training weapons, including compressed air or gas - tank expulsion guns, and that insures the harmless dropping of the ball insert to the ground within a short distance of the gun. This also enables ready distinction of the ball-cartridges from live ammunition, so that mistakes are unlikely.